Joanna Newsom - Have One On Me (RIP blogs)

oh, my fault, schlump, I thought you meant it the other way!

yeah J0hn, I know the horse I'm riding is a little bit dead, but still -- bummer that it's so much easier to go "LOL what are you trying," as if the attempt is a bad thing in itself, than to take a stand on how it's working

xpost - haha I took issue with various things about that Davis piece at the time

thanks god my detailed analysis of "emily" has been lost to the sands of the sandbox

bummer that it's so much easier to go "LOL what are you trying," as if the attempt is a bad thing in itself, than to take a stand on how it's working

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TvFvPKPqCRg

dont really like that erik davis bit :(

I mean I agree with you, but I'm a doof who reads poetry. the battle, if there was one, is kind of lost. when the terminology of poetic craft does manage to leak into general use at all, gotta just celebrate that people are trying to engage at some level; no gain in trying to explain "it's not wordplay just because you pronounced a word wrong to make it fit your meter" (my own all-time Quixote topic).

max did you read the rest of the piece about how there's never been music like this, I mean you'd think it was loveless or some other unprecedented masterpiece of incrediblosity

i guess my attitude to lyrics isn't really nuanced or engaged really, its just a case of phrases jumping out and resonating or seeming awesome or something that grabs my attention, so when the lyrics don't have any effect on me already, any explanation abt why its clever (unless it really reframes the lyric for me, or points out something that I hadn't twigged) is unlikely to have much effect on me

dont really like that erik davis bit :(
It reads better in the original French.

also, in Newsom's defense, I'm pretty sure my favorite bit of Ys involves a variation on the whole "horse walks into a bar, bartender says 'why the long face?'" joke

xpost - haha, J0hn, I'm not worried about terminology, more about some dystopian near future where well-educated people with good vocabularies are like "oh no a singer loved by middlebrow audiences used a big word or pun, this is critical and potentially disastrous"

I don't get the criticism of the orchestration on Ys seeming ornamental or "surface" at all. I could see saying that for something consistently ~*floaty*~ like... Vespertine. But in Ys, there's a strong sense of congruency in what she's singing and the sounds of the orchestra (e.g., in Only Skin when she sings "we felt the spray of the waves..." the orchestra totally sounds like waves crashing against each other). They're always moving, changing according to some internal plot and I think this adds a lot to the songs harmonically.

It doesn't strike me as mere John Williams-style "oooh, random manipulative swell of strings here" at all and I think the songs wouldn't be half as beautiful and engaging without them.

i don't see anyone making fun of her lyrics for using big words or puns or slant rhymes, they're making fun of her because the lyrics sound kind of silly, or you know

I don't like it because the words sound bad in my ears

i mean, do you really need more than that? some people just don't like her lyrics. does that diminish your enjoyment of her?

no but it diminishes my enjoyment of reading peoples posts

in Only Skin when she sings "we felt the spray of the waves..." the orchestra totally sounds like waves crashing against each other

the kind of thing you're describing is actually what I mean about ornamentation and distance -- sometimes it's like she's playing and the arrangements are a marionette show off to the side of her, acting things out. which was not always a bad thing for me! but occasionally I didn't like that relationship between them, I guess, even if imagining the missing marionette show was fun.

after seeing the 6-piece band the record comes across a bit overblown to me, for listening I would definitely go for the live recordings of that tour before the studio LP. I think V.D.P. went a little overboard, and the arrangements seemed intrusive to me after the live experience.

Feel a bit out of depth here talking about her lyrics but I certainly like them and think her phrases are often very well paced in the compositions.

argh paced = placed

nabisco, I get what you're saying, though maybe your analogy would work better if that relationship were consistently obvious throughout the album (which it really isn't). Another problem is it reduces the orchestral part entirely to your assumed function that it should (or even intends) to fulfill in the music.

But I don't know, I'm a sucker for moments of musical "impressionism" of that sort.

Another problem is it reduces the orchestral part entirely to your assumed function that it should (or even intends) to fulfill in the music.

this is where jn's biggest boosters start sounding like cult members fyi. "this part doesn't sound like it really works" "oh you're just bringing your own set of assumptions to the table, it works fine as long as you assume that what you're hearing is completely awesome"

im pretty sure thats how you are supposed to argue stuff

"brokencyde is awful" "yes but they mean to sound like that"

now ur getting it!

Seriously John? I'm not even questioning his reaction to the music at all, I'm talking about why I think the analogy doesn't entirely work, not why the music is "awesome" or why he should love the album. Commenting in this thread IS also fine if you happen to like the album and don't feel the need to be *~witty~* about your distaste for it.

just so we're clear i wasn't being sarcastic

Pretty sure J0hn wasn't either.

'sawdust and diamonds' is the only song to make me laugh *out loud* (at the 'long face' bit nabisco mentions) aswell as well up with tears on the first listen. just never experienced anything like that range of extereme emotions in the first listen of a song ever before. them's some damn good lyrics that can do that imho.

this should be a fun thread

― what u think i steen for to push a crawfish? (BIG HOOS aka the steendriver), Tuesday, January 12, 2010 11:11 PM (2 weeks ago)

I'm fully expecting that there will be about three of us will enjoy this record.

― kshighway (ksh), Tuesday, January 12, 2010 11:14 PM (2 weeks ago)

well yeah T I mean your position seems to be that critique of the record amounts to not understanding the record's aesthetic goals. this imo is a not a workable response - it basically means "your critique cannot be valid under any circumstances." since the goals of the artist aren't to the best of my knowledge stated explicitly anywhere, but are (here) inferred by yourself, it's fair to say "look, this sounds like an attempt at x, and it's not entirely successful," and that that's a more likely scenario than "this sounds like x, but in fact it is attempting something entirely different and cannot be critiqued as though it were attempting to achieve the aesthetics described as x, and any critique of it under the criteria contained in x is therefore invalid" - I mean - Psychocandy is a cavernous recreation of the Phil Spector aesthetic from one angle, but a sloppy mess from another, and both descriptions are valid.

I am not saying that at all, John. Maybe I didn't express myself clearly. He can dislike the album all he wants and I thought his description was actually awesome. I only said that equating the orchestra to marionettes DOES assume intentions/functions that---like you said---aren't very clear to begin with and make the ANALOGY work less.

marionettes . . .

There's a light in the wings
Hits this system of strings
From the side while they swing;
See the wires, the wires, the wires

so uh is it possible to hear good live recordings of ys without the damn orchestra?

yes, look for the 1st Unitarian show in Philly

thank u sleeve

2006-11-16

also: ys street band ep

if you want to hear the band instead of the orchestra

does andy samberg guest on this?

I only said that equating the orchestra to marionettes DOES assume intentions/functions that---like you said---aren't very clear to begin with and make the ANALOGY work less.

well, but I'd say short of some very clear recording decisions - stuff you'd hear at every pass - "orchestra" in itself codes with certain functions musically; it's not lazy or unkind to assume these functions as an aesthetic intent. it's not unfair to say than an orchestra's role in relation to a pop vocal sits within a certain grouping of aesthetic expectations (generally: support and counterpoint; one could go much, much deeper into this), and that unless those expectations are pretty clearly being refuted/interrogated, the absence of such functions is more likely to be a missing of the mark than a recontextualization/remimagining of the role of the orchestra.

disc 2, track 1: I'm On a Horse (feat. T-Pain & Andy Samberg)

xpost cool story, bro. but sorry, how does that contradict anything I said?

I only said that equating the orchestra to marionettes DOES assume intentions/functions that---like you said---aren't very clear to begin with

right: I am saying that there are aesthetic intentions contained in the use of an orchestra that it's fair to infer, absent some telegraphic function (the main ones I can imagine would be unusual instrumentation or recording techniques - filters, distortion - that call attention to themselves & to what they're doing)

is that clearer?

yes

I wish l0u1s jagg3r were around to give a detailed play-by-play analysis of Have One On Me when it comes out

Well so for the record I like Ys a lot! And as far the whole "ornamental" and "distanced" thing I'm talking about with the orchestration ... I'm not saying that's inherently a bad thing; I'm sure someone could make a record that did that in a way I thought was great. But on this record it does strike me as kind of a drawback. Which is why I was suggesting that maybe lots of people felt that way, and maybe that's why there's a ton of love for the live shows and recordings with a smaller group -- because one thing the live presentation definitely did was cut away this distanced/ornamental quality I'm talking about.

So, yeah. It seems like a pointed aesthetic decision and one that has some cool things about it, but there are parts of that record where I'm not sure it's the best choice. (Part of it might just be a recording thing, where the soundstage Newsom's on and the one the orchestra's on aren't meshing quite right.)

new joanna newsom music video leaked

New material an improvement imo

i dig the rapping

can I just, as a public service to kshighway, suggest listening to Owen Pallett / Final Fantasy, if he has not already? depending on what precisely you like about Ys, you might really enjoy his new one. thank you for your attention.

― oɔsıqɐu (nabisco), Tuesday, 26 January 2010 21:52 (Yesterday) Bookmark

did we talk about that record on here yet? i want to talk about that record i think

Uh-oh:

http://nymag.com/daily/entertainment/2010/01/joanna_newsom_three_times.html

Great news, fans of harps and indie rock: Indie-rock harpist Joanna Newsom is releasing a freaking triple album. It’s called Have One on Me and it’s out February 23 on Drag City. We’ve also gotten the first official song, “'81,” and it’s exactly as somber and pretty and overbearingly twee as you’d expect.

Indie-rock harpist

i meant it used the "t" word, but yeah.

huh, there I was listening to it and thinking that she had excised the remotest remnant of t*** from her music.